Episode 66 // Best Practices for using AI to Build Authentic Marketing

If I am using technology to save time and save creativity, that doesn’t mean I get to just go waste that. I need to go reinvest it somewhere else and do something else with it. And so I’m like, “Okay, so you saved 20 minutes because ChatGPT just pushed all this content out for you. What are you doing with that? 20 minutes?” Go learn. Go do something productive. It doesn’t mean you have to go do work. I’m not a micromanager in any means, but use that 20 minutes to self better. And I think that that’s where the best marketers will be applying their time.

You are listening to the Remarkabrand podcast, where authentic brands win.

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Remarkabrand podcast. I’m super excited to be here. This is Mike Jones and…

Sam Pagel.

And coming back…

Anati Zubia.

Thank you, Anati, for coming back. We’re going to be jumping into the second half of our interview that we’ve actually already recorded, so we’re going to do a little preamble here to kind of kick things off before we jump into that interview. It’s been fantastic having you on in the first episode, Anati, and I’m excited for everyone to hear the second half of that interview. But before we do that, we got to do something else that we always do. Name 10 things. All right. Sam, you’ve got to name 10 things for us, right?

Yeah. Well, actually, Anati did. She wants us to name 10 things that we want to automate in our lives.

Yeah.

So why don’t you start us off?

Yeah. How about laundry? I want the Jetsons’ life.

That’s good.

I’m down with that.

Wash it, fold it, put it away.

Laundrofy. There’s a name for it already.

Right? Exactly.

This is not new, but my commute. Just get me to the office without me thinking about it.

Yeah.

I don’t want to think about it. I want to just either appear… I mean, that would be great, teleportation, but at least just like I get in the car and I don’t think about it anymore.

Your car’s on a track and it just goes.

Yeah, it’s like a roller coaster.

Yeah, it’s like a roller coaster.

Could you imagine all the things you could do?

I could watch so many more YouTube videos.

Yeah.

That’s probably how I would waste that time.

You could could just hire a driver, Mike.

That’s true.

That’s true.

One way to “automate your life.” Just hire servants. I feel like our history has already done that. We’ve already been there.

I would love automated kitchen cleanup.

Ooh.

Yes.

It takes forever.

All the dishes.

Man.

Just do the whole shebang, though.

The whole house.

Like, preparing the food, the cooking of the food.

Okay. You’re a Disney fan. Did you ever watch, what is it called, Smart House or something?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Where it was like everything just folded into the floor. Like, you could just throw anything on the floor and it would just go down and then it would clean it or trash it. Smart House, that’s what we need.

We need this stuff. We need this stuff.

All right, that’s three. What do we got?

Oh, any home maintenance. It can repair it or it can call the repairman for me, but knowing, remembering that I have to call.

A light bulb goes out and somebody shows up the next hour.

Just does it.

Where you’re like, “I got to climb a ladder to get to this.” Or remembering to get your air conditioning checked out. I never remember that stuff, I have to put it on a calendar. Yeah, automated. Just do it for me. I don’t want to think about it.

That’s probably coming soon I would think.

Right?

Everything’s connected to wifi now.

Yeah.

I want automated teeth cleaning. I just don’t ever want to do that again.

You don’t want to go to the dentist.

The brushing, the dentist, all of it. I want it just in my sleep, clean my teeth.

Yep.

How is that not a thing already?

Yeah.

We got the Invisalign guard. Can’t you just throw some toothpaste in there and call it done?

Yep. I think it’s a great idea. I’m going to say automate workouts because I hate the gym. I will not go to a gym. I don’t want to go run a mile.

You’ve seen the little ab pack thing, right, where you’re supposed to sit and watch TV and-

Well, I want it to actually work, Mike.

Oh, okay, fine.

Sorry, I should have said that.

That would be great.

What else, Anati?

Yeah, count me in.

Four more.

Automate? Oh, gosh. Automate vacation planning. I just want to show up and go. I don’t want to pack. I don’t want to schedule everything. And I know there’s travel agents, but I don’t want to even talk to the travel agent. I just want to say, “This is what I’m doing,” and have it surprise me.

Yeah.

There is a service that, it’s sort of that where you pre-pack stuff, it’s primarily for work trips where you pre-pack it, so you send it off to a storage space and then you just say, “Hey, I’m going to be in this city at this hotel at this date. Send it to me.”

And it sends your box to you?

And it just sends it all to you.

That’s cool.

And I’m like, “That’s kind of brilliant.”

Right?

It’d be cool, though-

Except for the thinking ahead part.

You go to Hawaii and you don’t have to bring anything. You show up, your hotel closet-

Wardrobe’s all there.

It’s like you rent them for the week.

All pressed, ready to go.

But they’re all ready to go, new clothes. It’s all-

All your activities are planned.

All your restaurants are-

All your restaurants are booked.

Man, that’s a good idea.

Yeah, and all these places say they’re all-inclusive. Come on.

No.

Come on. They’re not all-inclusive.

No. And I don’t want to talk to anybody to do it. I just want to be like, “This is what I want.”

Somehow your kids are there. You haven’t seen them in a day, but they’re just there. If they automated that too, that’d be great.

Now, I don’t have kids, but how would the parents feel of automated homework assistance? Am I right? Am I right?

Yeah.

That’d be good.

That would be nice.

That was torture for me trying to sit there and… The way I did math versus the way my dad did math, there were lots of tears shed.

That was me too.

Yeah, yeah. Right?

My dad doing speed tests with me back in, what was that, fifth grade?

They’re like, “You have to write cursive like this.” And I’m like, “We don’t even write cursive.”

“My hand hurts. Make it make a stop. This is torture.”

Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

All right, got two more.

All right, two more.

Two more automation-

Well, handwriting. Just writing things.

Yep.

Yeah. Just take my thoughts and just put them on paper. No, that’s probably a bad idea. Probably a bad idea if all my thoughts were recorded.

Automated journaling.

“Turn it off. No, not that one!”

Oh, my gosh. Automated journaling. I love it. I love it.

I’m trying to think of what’s the hardest thing in life?

Ooh, oh, oh.

All right, Mike’s got it. Bring it home, Mike.

Just import the knowledge into my brain of all the books I’m reading.

Yeah.

Do I have to take the time to read them all?

It’s like a memory card.

Little memory card. Pop it in.

Download it.

“All right, I got it.”

I want The Giver experience. You ever see that movie?

It’s been a long time.

Jeff Bridges. I just watched it the other day again, it’s so good. They’ve created this entirely different world where there’s no pain, there’s no murder, there’s no emotion. There’s no uniqueness, but there’s one person who has all the knowledge and they pass it down and he’s got this next kid, so he becomes the giver and the kid is… His job is the receiver. And so he is sharing all this knowledge. And a lot of it’s painful too because it’s like wars and death and sickness and everything. But I think about that, he basically just touches his arms and their heads go back and they sit there and this knowledge just transfers. It’s like the Matrix where Keanu just pops up, “I know kung fu.” I would love that. Can you imagine learning language like that? That’s what I would double down on, I know every language.

Yeah, that’d be cool.

Read and write.

Yep.

I think the hard work in those things is the reason why we know them. That’s the downside.

Yeah. It puts wrinkles in our brains.

Yep. Yep. Makes us who we are.

We hit 10, right?

That’s it.

Sweet.

Awesome.

Find your frequency.

All right, so we’re about to listen to this interview with Anati, which is weird. We’re talking about an interview that’s already happened as if it hasn’t happened yet for our listeners at least, but I’m excited about this interview. We talked in the first episode about AI and particularly AI and how marketers can maybe leverage it and use it and ways to think about it, maybe some ways that would be positive about how you can use it. And in this half of the interview, we get a little bit more into some of the disadvantages of AI or maybe some of the pitfalls and things to watch out for. So as we kind of get people excited about that, Anati, what would you say that you think people should be thinking about as they’re listening to this interview that we literally just did?

Absolutely. No, this was not generated by AI.

Hey, that’s one of them.

Exactly. No, I think that is the caveat, though, is just knowing as you’re listening to this and as you’re thinking about AI, the best piece of advice I could give you is just remember, this is very, very early stage technology. We are literally at the beginning of our journey. And so there’s going to be a lot of growing pains that we’re going to go through as we learn what this AI thing can do for our world and for our careers and for our happiness and our lives. And so I think that that’s really important to just stay grounded to the fact that this is new and we all have our role to play in developing it as we go on. So we’ll talk a little bit about pitfalls and things to watch out for and a couple other ways. We get in a little bit of ways that you can use or things you should be thinking about as a marketer right now that AI can distract you from. So keep those things in mind as you listen.

You are remarkable.

I think back to the internet itself, we blazed fast to get the internet and get it in our homes before we thought about online predators or the danger that it could cause or scams. We didn’t think about that stuff and now we’re… It’s always our rules and our laws are three steps, four steps behind the speed of our technology. And I think we’ve seen a lot of growing pains because of that, and I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to get out of it. It’s just the reality of the rapid pace that we’re growing, the innovation that we have. Let’s not stifle innovation, but I also think that we do need to start thinking about those sorts of things where if you’re putting out something that is AI generated, you should probably say, “This is AI generated.”

I’m a huge fan of The Onion. It brings me laughs daily, but I’m also like I know that there are people out there in the world that read those articles and think they’re real.

And they think it’s real.

They think they’re real, and it causes undue stress or causes them to make bad financial decisions or do something that they shouldn’t. So I think we have to as a society, just take that edge and say, “Okay, let’s exhibit a little bit of care there to know that there’s some lines that we probably shouldn’t cross with this.” And I also think the other side of it too, and this is what I tell marketers all the time, and I think to myself, if I am using technology to save time and save creativity, that doesn’t mean I get to just go waste that. I need to go reinvest it somewhere else and do something else with it.

And so I’m like, “Okay, so you saved 20 minutes because ChatGPT just pushed all this content out for you. What are you doing with that 20 minutes?” Go learn. Go do something productive. It doesn’t mean you have to go do work. I’m not a micromanager in any means, but use that 20 minutes to self better. And I think that that’s where the best marketers will be applying their time. Go learn something more about that technology or go share this with a peer that maybe is a little bit hesitant using these tools or use that time for something productive so that we are not completely reliant on technology and aren’t innovating. I think that’s the challenge is we have to continue to innovate and press forward. And if we don’t, we’re not going to be challenging that technology any because it’s relying on us to learn. So we have to keep learning. So it’s kind of like a cyclical relationship where I’m pushing people, I’m like, “Use the technology, but use the free time for something that’s going to mean something to the world.”

Yeah, it’s almost like the way that we’ve been challenged I think in the last 10 years to say, it’s like if I liken it to social media, we could easily kind of think that social media replaces my need to work hard to have relationships with people. I’m getting that. I hopped onto Twitter, I looked at my river of content. I liked a few things, I commented on a few things. I’m good. I have facilitated relationship with people, instead of saying, “I did. I did facilitate relationship.” I think there’s a good side to that. Like keeping up with people that maybe you wouldn’t as easily be able to keep up with, yeah, it saved you some time. It maybe saved you a phone call, it maybe saved you a coffee hangout or now a Zoom call. But if you exclusively did that and you never had phone calls, you never had a Zoom date, you never had a conversation with somebody in real time, you have not really given anyone else an opportunity to serve them and build relationship with them.

And I think the same goes for AI. I could see a world where we all just basically hand overthinking and we say, “I don’t have to really think anymore.” I can let somebody else do the research. I can let some of this tool do the thinking for me, do some initial thought generation, and then I just have to facilitate it over the wall, back out to the world. Maybe put my personality on it, my brand’s personality, put some flare on it. But if I’m not, like you said, if I’m not going back and I’m learning something, even if it has nothing to do with the business I’m in, even if it’s not related to marketing, go read an interesting book. Go listen to an interesting lecture, go hear from actual people directly. Hear from sources directly. Don’t just let AI become a filter for you.

And I think that’s… For me, personally, that’s my biggest concern with AI is that we get to a point where we’re so lazy that we just let it filter everything for us. We already see how we do that in social media. We let these tools filter essentially what we get to see and don’t see. And now we live in a world somewhat, I’m not going say it’s all Facebook’s fault, but to some degree it’s like Facebook shows you what you like and it won’t show what you don’t like. And so you never have to interact with people who disagree with you, and you never have to deal with that in a place where my next door neighbor has to live with me and I have to live with them.

I’m probably not going to move just because we might have slightly different political viewpoints or even extremely different political viewpoints or different religious viewpoints or different styles of clothes or just whatever. But on social media, I don’t have to deal with that. And I think we could easily find ourselves in a world with AI where you really don’t ever have to deal with that. You never even have to interact with an idea that is at all contrary to something you’ve thought before.

Yeah. Well, and AI is not… There’s no diversity in AI, and I think that’s the other challenge is the most innovative companies in the world seek out diverse perspectives because that’s what makes them grow. They look at it from a different angle. If you look at everything through the same lens all the time, everything looks fine. And so I think that’s incredibly important, is AI representing… Is it representative of underrepresented groups in our world? I would argue to say no. I mean, there’s tons of people that are underrepresented online and that’s where that information comes from. So yeah, I think it’s a very… It’s interesting, you have to take those challenges out and I mean, I would say from content marketing, it’s a best practice anyway. Shopping your content with your customers, I don’t think this changes.

No.

You’re still going to have to go and shop content with your customers, whether you wrote it or AI wrote it. It still has to resonate, it still has to work. And I think marketers, our KPIs are not changing. I mean, if you’re looking at this thinking, “This is going to solve everything for me,” I hate to break it to you, technology has never been the solution for anything. You still have to-

It’s a facilitator.

Yeah, you still have a great strategy. Technology is only as good as your car. It’s only as good as the gas you put in it. So really think about that and look at it from that angle to still take those best practices that are important and still track your KPIs and use it to get better and know when it got better. I think that’s the big thing is if you’re using it for improving your SEO, put some benchmarks out and say, “Hey, here’s how we grew and the tool we used.” Give it the credit.

If it did it, be like, “Hey, yeah, I was inspired by this.” I think that’s perfectly fine. But yeah, I think there’s that element there of, okay, if you got into that stage, keep chiseling away at other things. AI’s not the end. I mean, I remember when automation… I feel really old, you guys. I remember I talk about social media, I talk about automation. I’m old, I’m old. I don’t feel old. I feel super young. But no, the reality is automation, there was this whole fear when automation came out of, “Automation is going to replace customer success and it’s going to replace service and it’s going to replace sale.” I’m like, “No, it’s not.” I mean, it’s not elevator operators. I think that’s the only thing that’s gone anymore. And those are still cool when you go into an old school hotel that has one.

But it was the same thing with ATMs. Everybody was afraid of, “ATMs are going to replace bankers.” I do not see that situation anywhere. Granted, sometimes you just don’t want to talk to a person. And I get that because I’m exactly that way where I’m like, “I just want to get my thing done.” But I think that’s the other layer of this is you have to know what your customer’s journey is, and it’s going to be different for what their need is and what they want at that moment.

Sometimes they just want to talk to a person. They will slam zero on that phone until they get a real human being, or they just want to ask a question to a chatbot and get it right now, instant gratification. And if we use AI to speed up that process, awesome. If you use AI to know when to connect to a real human, now you’re winning. So I think that’s that playbook there. But yeah, it’s interesting. We’ve changed so much over time and we’ve had all these fears about replacing it. I’ve had a lot of people ask me, I have a friend that’s an auditor and he’s like, “Is AI going to replace my job?” I went, “Maybe.” I’m like, “What else are you learning right now?”

Yeah, I think if you’re lazy, yeah, it will.

Exactly.

Because let’s be honest, the simple… For lack of a better word, the dumb stuff that we all have to do, there’s some aspect of your job right now that you’d be like, “Yep, that’s dumb that I have to do that.” Technology should replace that at some level. So if you’re going to just sit there and go, “I’m okay doing the dumb stuff and not learning new things,” yeah, you should expect that you’re going to get replaced.

You’re going to run over by the train.

You’re going to run over by the train.

Don’t be complacent. And I think that’s what I would tell anyone right now, if you’re worried about your job being replaced by AI, one, that’s not happening tomorrow. This technology is still very infancy phases. I cannot stress that enough to people. This is just the beginning. You have an opportunity right now and your opportunity is learn to wield it, learn to innovate with it so that when it does become mainstream, you’re the person that knows how to operate it. And I think back to, I don’t know if you have seen the movie Hidden Figures.

Mm-mm.

Incredible movie, highly recommended. It’s about Black women computers at NASA during the time of segregation even. These are the most brilliant mathematicians are responsible for putting us into space. And one of the women there, she was running… She wasn’t even a manager, they wouldn’t even give her a manager title of all things, but she’s basically the manager for the Black Women’s Computing group, and they’re just running calculations all day long.

And she realizes they bring in IBM and there’s these computers, a whole room of computers, and she realizes that this is going to replace them. And she picked up on that and went and got books and started training herself, started training her staff, and then went in one day and just was like, “Hey, I know how to operate this machine and you’re going to need people that put the calculations in that know how to use this.” And her entire team were the first ones to use it, and she ended up becoming a manager over that group and actually even managing, out of segregation, she was managing the white women’s computing group by the time-

Yeah, because she knew it.

Because she knew it. And that insight that she had looking at the same, “I’m not going to be replaced. I’m going to become irreplaceable,” because she knew how to wield technology. And I think there’s a great lesson. Hidden Figures, recommend the movie, please watch it. But I look back at that and I’m like that’s one of those things that was a chance. Right now is the moment. Right now is the moment. Whether you’re an auditor or a lawyer or a content creator, I mean, I don’t care what profession you’re in right now, there is some way that technology is going to change you in the next 10, 20 years. Be a part of it. Be part of it.

I think about… I mean, this is not, and you’ve said this multiple times, this is not new. It’s not a new trend. We’ve talked about, “Oh, everybody now has an iPhone.” Everybody can go shoot a video or take a good-looking photo. We do that in our business, we’ll do professional photography and videography and production. Is that going to go away? Are people just not going to need that from us anymore? And we were like, “Nope.” They’re going to need it because there’s going to come a day where everybody’s doing that and there’s going to be this clear line between, “Oh, your nephew shot that on his iPhone and we actually took the time to build a story, work out the details, find the right people, write the script, shoot it professionally with lighting. And that’s just a difference maker. And I think even with something like ChatGPT, there’s going to be an opportunity probably in the near future where it’s like, I think you said it-

The professional ChatGPT operator.

Well, that but also there’s going to probably come a point in time where people are hungry for that human voice again, because there’s all this computer generated stuff out there and it’s like double down on that, get really good at that. So when the time comes where it’s like no one’s talked to a human in a week, it’s like be that person.

Well, and it’s the art of communication too. And I think even… I mean, our poor kids have been on lockdown for several years, and my sister-in-law’s a teacher, my best friend’s a teacher, and they said the way kids communicate has completely changed. And I think to a family event, a family birthday party I went to recently, all the adults are outside. We’re enjoying food and music and having fun. And the kids, I kid you not, are in a room, they’re quiet, which was wonderful, honestly. But they were all quiet on their devices and I was just like, “Wow.” If that would’ve been me at that age, we would’ve been running around like crazy. And it’s changed. And I’m not against that. I love that kids just naturally… I mean, they come out of the womb with an iPhone these days, but I love that they naturally gravitate towards technology because I feel like it’s an interesting thing.

It’s kind of my philosophy on education, but I think about back to Rockefeller times where they wanted to teach kids to be workers because they needed workers and didn’t teach them to be entrepreneurs. And I’m like, I love that there’s that access to technology now because kids can learn things all over the place from any different angle. They want to go get Cisco certified from the best professor in Slovakia, they can do that. And that’s cool. I didn’t have that type of opportunity. But I also look at it, I’m like there’s an art of communication that’s missing. And the presentation that we put, I even think about, and I’m a lover of social media, I think about how you present yourself on Instagram or how you present yourself on TikTok. You have filters. You have filters. You’re trying to put your best self forward.

You should in a video. I mean, that’s what everybody wants to do is look their best. But I think the challenge there is that it’s also not real. And so when you’re presented with those situations that are less than that and you’re not behind that digital veil, can you still be the person you are when you have the digital veil? And I think that’s a challenge there. It’s that art of, and that’s where creatives are really going to be coming in, is how do you create that inhuman experience versus that artificial experience that’s so easy to create? It’s going to become commoditized. I mean, I could go create a video tomorrow with a filtered face that makes me look like I’m 13 again, which is crazy. But that reality is there, and I agree with you. I think that creating that inhuman feeling, that’s what professionals will be doing.

They’ll be crafting that. It’s more like image coaching even, like how do we pull out the real you? It’s interesting. I haven’t tried it yet, I’m going to, maybe I’ll share them if they’re good. But I recently saw AI, now you can get professional headshots done and you can send a whole bunch of your photos in and it creates these. And I was watching a girl’s video that did them, and I was laughing. It was really, really funny because they were like out of 100 photos, there were five that were actually great. I was like, “Okay, you could use those five and that’s all you really need.” But there were several of the bloopers that she shared and there was one where she had her hand by her neck and it had three fingers that were weird, and then one where her fingers were coming into each other. And then she… One had two different colored eyes. It was really funny. It was really, really funny. But I think about that and I’m like… That’s why I say, it’s not new, but it’s also not there yet.

And I’ve always cautioned people… I don’t have an off switch, we’ve talked about this. I’m always doing something and photography is one of my really big passions. And I used to own a photography business before I moved to Arizona, and I always used to tell people, “You get what you pay for.” And especially those moments, like your wedding, if your wedding photos are ruined, they’re ruined. There’s no replacing that. But I think back, I’m like if you’re trying to produce something that puts that best image forward, you’re producing something that represents your brand or is representing your company or your hiring brand, don’t skip out on that. Don’t skip out on that. Invest in it. Make it something that you’re really, really proud of that your employees want to share, because it will go a long, long way if you do that. Just shooting it on an iPhone with a white background wall and the harsh fluorescent lights, I mean, yeah-

Or just AI generated.

Or just AI generated, which you didn’t completely do there, Stella. It makes a difference. And I think it also makes a difference too, like the… I see a lot of people playing with AI generated videos for help videos, and I think that can work, but it’s going to take a human to really write the script for that because they know how other humans think in using their product, AI isn’t going to know. So there’s some gaps there. Can you use it? I think you can play around with it.

I would say try it, but don’t have super high expectations. Go into it realistic where you’re like, “Okay, my budgets are tied.” All marketers are. I mean, it’s literally like we’re asked to do more with nothing continually, but it’s like, “Okay, where are you going to scrimp on that?” Try it. And then if it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to say, “Hey, this is what the output was. I tried it. I tried it, and this is why it’s not good.” Because sometimes that’s what you need is to just say, “We went that route. We invested in it,” and you’ll never be asked to do it again.

Yeah. We just talked about this a couple episodes ago about don’t forget that marketing branding, it’s about people. Your business, whatever you do, service, product, it’s for people. It’s not for a machine. It’s not just for generating something else. It has to be people-centric, people-focused.

Marketers forget, and myself included, many times, I have to be reminded, we forget that those CRM numbers that we’re reporting our KPIs on are human beings. And I think that’s a very important thing. And it’s really easy to fall in the trap, especially as marketing is more and more and more and more digital. And especially if you’re in a SaaS space like I am where it’s high growth. You’re moving as fast as you can with as much efficiency, as little as budget as possible. You forget. Sometimes you forget. And I’ve noticed a lot of organizations like… And I think that’s why this current time… The current structure, though, and some of the economic challenges we’re having are actually a positive thing. I know that sounds really bad, but bear with me.

No, they are.

Because acquisition, if you’ve got so much stress in your acquisition, you are always realizing that you have challenges further on, and your brand is not acquiring. It’s a customer. It’s an entire experience. It’s the entire walkthrough of how you don’t remember the first ad you saw. You don’t remember the name of the sales guy. You don’t remember the name of the person that just solved your problem on support, but you remember the brand and that positive or negative experience you had with the brand.

And I think marketers now, if you’ve spent so much time acquiring, acquiring, acquiring, and not paying attention to the customers, do you have lifetime value? How long does it actually take you to get to that? What is your CAC? What’s your cocktail tv? Are you tied into that as a marketer right now? I mean, I hate to say it, but this stuff’s your North Star, especially right now. There’s no recession from marketing. But that is what you should be paying attention to because if your customer funnel is leaking, it doesn’t matter how hard you ask your acquisition team to work right now, and the economy is slow.

People are cutting budgets, they’re not investing in new things. Your loyal customers aren’t there, and they’re still falling out the funnel, you’re now putting tons of pressure on your acquisition teams to perform at higher rates, they can’t do it, and now you’re going to burn cash. And there’s no AI solution to solve for that because the reality is, it’s knowing people. It’s going back to the heartbeat of who is the customer and are you solving their problem? Is your product actually a market fit? Do you know who your ICP is?

Those are all things you can train an AI to know, but your AI is not going to tell you that. You have to come up with that yourself. And that’s where strategic leaders in marketing departments are always going to be sitting there at that end of the table. Sometimes the chair’s a little shorter than their counterparts. We’re working on that, but that’s where that marketer has to come in. If you’re not paying attention to customer journey right now and how to better serve your customers and thinking about AI, how does AI help you serve your customers better? Is it a chat support or is it help videos? Blend it there. That’s a great place to start, especially right now because it’s one of those really wonky periods where there’s not a lot of that high acquisition happening. I mean, some industries that are still happening, but if you’re in SaaS like I am, it’s a challenge.

It’s not just SaaS. It’s everywhere. We’re seeing it, and we play in some other fields like accounting and law firms and engineering firms, other professional services and tech, and we’ve got some manufacturing clients too, and it’s like we’re seeing it across the board. The ones that I think are going to really thrive through the next year to two years are those that double down on their existing customers and say, “Let us deliver the best possible experience that we can in service of a relationship.” And we talked about this. I think, Sam, you just referred to this a couple episodes ago. We spent a whole episode just talking about reminding ourselves the end goal of marketing is not sales, it’s long-term relationships. And so how do you do that? There’s lots of ways to do that. Some of that’s delivering a great experience. Some of that’s just following up.

It’s asking questions, it’s listening. Sometimes it’s also give a little bit away. Give them some value or remind them that we’re here, we want to help you. This is a relationship. We want to maintain and grow our relationship with you. One of the ways that we do that as individuals is we say, “Hey, I’ll give you something. I’ll give you some of my time. I’ll give you some of my expertise, and I don’t expect anything in return. I’ll drop off a meal.” These are ways that we build relationships with one another as individuals. I think sometimes as businesses we go, “Oh, none of that stuff matters.” And it’s like, no, it’s the exact same stuff just applied at scale.

Yeah. That’s the art of conversation, the art of relationships. And I love that. It goes back to the point you were saying, like the stuff we don’t want to do. The stuff we don’t want to do is sit down and write 20 some nurture emails. I mean, maybe some people do. I don’t. But the reality of that is, I would much rather use my free time that I have to call a customer or go out and do a site visit or sit down with one of our customers having a challenge and help them solve it. Those are things that are more important and help me improve as a marketer. That was one of the first things I did when I started at Quora. I picked up the phone and called customers. I actually did that. I called two or three a quarter and just have no agenda conversation, like, “Tell me what you’re working on.”

And I think those are things that as a marketing leader, I even found hard to find time. I literally had to carve it out of my schedule. And I think about that now and I’m like, “Everybody would benefit from those things.” And I think we don’t do them because it roils down to I have to get these tactical things done every single day. The things I don’t want to do that I procrastinate that are going to… Maybe it really takes five minutes to do this, but it takes me 20 because I hate doing it. But be real about those things with yourself. If those can be replaced, then you can spend more time on those relationship building factors like you were talking about. And I think there’s places, I love a good chatbot. I’m actually a huge fan of Drift, hopefully they hear my shout-out. But I think those technologies are fantastic for helping people online at the time. And I think that’s where you need to know when the person needs a human and your customers-

Or just give them that option. Like you talked about earlier, sometimes people want the robot and some people want, at a different time, want a human being.

Yeah. And it’s all… It depends on their learning journey. I mean, I would argue to say if my dad and I went, my dad is… He’s getting close to 80 and he still buys things online, which I’m super proud of. I taught him to use eBay. I never should have. Now he’s using Amazon. He’s a professional. If he listens to this, he’s going to call me. I taught him to use these tools. I’m like, “Dad, you need to utilize this. It’s great.” And so he’s out there online shopping, but his need, if he doesn’t understand something, he wants to pick up the phone and call and ask questions. He’s not going to go look at the FAQs. I am. And that’s the difference is you have to know who your customer base is. And if you’re serving predominantly people that are in the native tech range, that’s fine, but if your customers go up into my dad’s persona, you’ve got to find ways around serving them.

I mean, it’s not fair to eliminate them just because, “Oh, you didn’t use the chatbot?” I mean, the last thing my dad wants to talk to is the chatbot. He doesn’t even understand what the chatbot is. So I think that’s the challenge there is we have to think about what type of service they want and give them options. Everybody wants an option. I mean, I do too. Email subscriptions or how I talk to a company or how I can reach you, what kind of questions I can ask when. Everybody wants options. And I think it’s just knowing what those options are and being able to serve them and use AI where you can.

Yep.

Right? That’s a great place for it.

I love it. I think that’s a good final statement. Use AI where you can.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love it.

Wield it.

Cool. Thanks for coming on, Anati. If people want to get ahold of you or they want to find out more about you, where’s a good place or a couple places for them to find you?

Yeah, absolutely. I am very active on LinkedIn, so I’ll spell my name. So A-N-A-T-I is my first name, last name Zubia, Z-U-B-I-A. I’m on LinkedIn or you can feel free to email me. My email is just Anati.Zubia@gmail.com. Happy to start up conversations. I love talking marketing. I love talking obviously SaaS, but would love to hear from you guys, especially I’d love to hear feedback. This conversation was a ton of fun. And yeah, always happy to sit and dork out about marketing. It’s my love. So thank you so much, Sam and Mike.

Thank you, Anati.

Thanks for inviting me. It was a lot of fun.

The Remarkabrand podcast is a project of Resound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with hosts Mike Jones and David Cosand. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at Remarkablecast.com. If you’d like more episodes, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. To contact the show, find out more about the Remarkabrand podcast or to join our newsletter list to make sure you never miss another episode, check out our website at Remarkablecast.com. Copyright Resound Creative Media LLC, 2022.